Martyn Glanville: October 2008

It's like someone looked inside my head

House of the Dead: Overkill

Spider-Man in Denmark

Image via WikipediaHE'S AN urban hero, Spider-Man. Does well in built-up environments where there are plenty of street lights, tall buildings and other paraphernalia which help him when it comes to locomotion. Thwipping web strands from lamp-post to lamp-post makes for easy transport.

Driving through the light fog this morning, I eyed the lamp-posts running the length of the central reservation on my beloved E55 motorway and I got an image of Spider-Man swinging from one to another. It occurred to me that Peter Parker's be-webbed alter ego wouldn't have much joy out in the countryside.

Put him in a field. There may be a tree or two. He could climb them. But I could climb them too. If luck was on his side, there might be a farmhouse and a barn. Perhaps he could spin a web between the two and halt a fleeing yokel who's nicked a tractor. I can run faster than a tractor. Probably. I suppose he could jump around a bit better than me, and use his enhanced strength to gain something of an advantage, but I can't really see outside of an urban environment how he'd be that much better than you or me.

Flat countries like Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium (that's flat, isn't it?) don't figure that much in superhero comic book literature (do they? I'm no expert so you'll just have to trust me). That said, in Spider-Man's 40-year plus history, I feel pretty sure he's not confined himself solely to Manhattan.

If anyone can furnish me with the issues where he comes to the Danish countryside, I'd be in your debt.

Sometimes I don't give TV credit

Morning photographs

GOT OUT of the car this morning after arriving at work and thought the emerging light and low-level fog was interesting. Snapped these on the BlackBerry. They are testament to why later BlackBerries have dropped the camera...

Strange concrete - Part II

MORE STRANGE concrete, this time being used to counterbalance a roadroller. You see this kind of stuff when you live next to an art museum. It was rather fascinating.

Strange concrete

I SAW this strange piece of concrete filling in a playground yesterday.

By design or accident?

Life on Mars

Image via WikipediaCASTRO GLUGGER Snr. lives on party island Ibiza, and has done for pushing two decades now. Dutiful son that I am, I've been visiting him regularly for many years. It's an easy place to visit, for obvious reasons.

A curious memory from my first trips there was the exchange of battered and usually bootleg VHS video tapes among the expat community. This was a time pre-Sky when all the permanent Brits on the island had by way of televisual entertainment was whatever dross was passed around - fuzzy copies of Fatal Attraction or The Witches of Eastwick (the sexual undercurrent in such titles gave them a currency). Now everyone there is plugging in illegal feeds from satellites and all the wonders of broadcasting are theirs for the taking.

As an expat myself, I don't bother with Danish TV to be honest. And those 350 DVDs I lugged over from England don't get watched too much. Instead, I'm borrowing English telly on DVD from my neighbours - also expats. I am doing what my Dad and his chums used to do.

I'm a bit more picky. For them, it was a case of anything in English would do. For me, I can have everything I want if I can be bothered to get it. Instead, I go by recommendations.

So far, I have been lent Marion and Geoff, which I enjoyed a great deal. More recently, I caught up with Life on Mars. This struck a particular chord, not because I have been knocked down by a car and woken up in 1973, more because I am a similar fish out of water, if you'll permit me such a comparison.

There's something vaguely Auster-ish about repeating what my father did in both becoming an expat and following the rituals of that state, then finding out those rituals concern the expat experience in some respects - Sam Tyler is an expat whose home is 2006 but finds himself in the early 70s. Just as Sam is never quite sure where he is and what is real, so being in a country where you are frequently misunderstood, looked at strangely, and even find the clothing frankly bizarre is a curious experience.

It's the freakiest show.

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Written while listening to Pulp - Party Hard
via FoxyTunes